Foo's retreat to her suburban outpost in Radnor certainly puts an exclamation point on the continuing shift of Philly's Gourmet Ground Zero from Walnut Street to various new poles of dining power, now well-dispersed throughout the city. Not coincidentally, though, there's usually a Garces restaurant to lend the hottest of those strips magnetic pull, from Old City (Amada) to University City (Distrito) to Sansom Street (Tinto) and the 700 block of Chestnut Street, where Chifa opened in February.
On a level of purely culinary note, however, Chifa's arrival marks a full-circle bookend to the evolution of fusion cuisine itself - a story begun two decades ago by Foo, who combined her native Chinese flavors with continental techniques and contemporary presentations with such elegance and lasting influence that we now take it for granted. Unfortunately, lesser chefs have given fusion a bad name through random combinations and pedestrian imitation.
Enter Garces, whose earlier restaurants were among the best examples of the next step in the evolution: American chefs began updating foreign flavors from within the boundaries of those authentic traditions (be they Andalusian tapas or Mexican moles) rather than simply sprinkling exotic ingredients onto Western templates.
Chifa's liberally interpreted bicultural menu risks falling victim to the "anything-goes" cliches of fusion folly, even though it is thoroughly updated with sophisticated, cutting-edge techniques, smaller plates, and a stylishly moody ambience.
